After its initial sanction of extreme violence against the
protestors, TransCanada has
apparently managed to keep its security officers relatively restrained except
for the occasional roughing-up or hog-tying. The multi-billion dollar
Canadian company's more recent actions have included numerous court suits
against landowners and protestors, including a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public
Participation, known as a SLAPP
suit, a form of litigation that has been limited by statute in 28 states other
than Texas.

The SLAPP suit is a notorious form
of legal bad faith, designed
not so much to be won (or even taken to trial) by the plaintiffs, but rather to
intimidate, silence, censor, and exhaust the resources of opponents who are
typically, as with environmental groups like the Tar Sands Blockade, incapable
of matching the resources of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Even before the SLAPP suit, TransCanada had aroused anger
among landowners by its use of eminent
domain to take control of their land along the pipeline route. Texas law expects eminent domain to be
used for a public purpose, and the Texas Supreme Court has ruled similarly in
recent cases, but the Texas Railroad
Commission continues to allow eminent domain claims based on earlier custom. The question is currently on appeal,
but the pipeline construction continues.

The failure
of the state of Texas to protect Texas landowners has aroused considerable
anger and resentment, as expressed by Edwin Tullos in a letter
to the Dallas Morning News: "As a landowner in rural Texas, I find
use of the law by a company to override landowners' rights for a profit venture
extremely disconcerting. The interpreting of the law by state level government
officials in this matter demonstrates their intent to use it to void any law
protecting private landowners from profit oriented consortiums including
foreign companies--as this one is. How secure are we in our homes when the
state--not federal--orders our homes seized to assure the profit of their donors?"

TransCanada Harasses Tree-sitters with
Light and Sound

TransCanada has maintained low level pressure on the
tree-sitters, with round-the-clock security waiting to arrest anyone who might
come down and anyone who might try to bring supplies. The company has also maintained floodlights on the
treehouses all night, powered by noisy generators, making sleep difficult. For some reason, TransCanada turned off
the lights and generators the night of October 24, according to retired Col. Ann
Wright who visited with the tree-sitters without incident.

That same day a Louisiana woman chained herself to the gate of a
TransCanada

equipment yard, preventing trucks
and other heavy equipment from going to work until sheriff's deputies cut her
chains with bolt-cutters and arrested her. Cherri Foytlin,
mother of six and wife of an oil field worker, posted her intentions in advance
in a video
and on her blog, Bridge
The Gulf, acting
in solidarity
with an another anti-pipeline movement in Canada.

In British Columbia in western Canada, massive and
widespread opposition has emerged
to try to stop another pipeline intended to bring molten tar sands oil from
central Alberta to an oil tanker port in Vancouver on the Puget Sound. On October 22, thousands
of people took to the streets of the provincial capitol Victoria to make their views known to
the provincial legislature and Premier Christy Clark. Two days later the protestspread
across the province as more
than 60 localcommunities
joined hands in solidarity
against the pipeline plan, with significant media
attention

Texas Land Commissioner Calls Blockaders
"Eco-anarchists"

An elected official, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry
Patterson, called the blockaders names
in an October 16 op-ed
piece that begins,
inaccurately: "I've recently
learned that a bunch of out-of-state, self-appointed "eco-anarchists' think they know
better than Texans and have arrived to save us from ourselves. They're trying
to block the Keystone Pipeline Gulf Coast Project, the pipeline that's under construction
in East Texas that will create thousands of jobs and lessen our dependence on
foreign oil."

This provoked a number of hostile letters
and comments in opposition in the Dallas Morning News and elsewhere around the state. The Tar Sands Blockade is a native
Texan effort with supporters from other states.

National mainstream media coverage, like the Times, has been spotty and behind the
curve: on October 15, the Washington Post
"discovered" the three-week old civil disobedience in the treetops; on October
17 an Associated Press report
said "a battle is brewing over an unlikely project, an oil pipeline;" and on
October 19 the Los Angeles Times
reported on 78 year old Eleanor Fairchild's October 4 arrest (with actress
Daryl Hannah) to protest the pipeline's damage to her farm and livelihood.

Regional mainstream media coverage has been somewhat more
attentive, with the Fort Worth Weekly
running a lengthy, balanced overview piece on October 17. Similarly, regional TV has aired some coverage,
but the Tar Sands Blockade of TransCanada's pipeline has apparently not yet
been covered by any national TV news network or program.

Vermonter living in Woodstock:
elected to five terms (served 20 years) as side judge (sitting in Superior, Family, and Small Claims Courts);
public radio producer, "The Panther Program" -- nationally distributed, three albums (at CD Baby), some (more...)